What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(25)

Kellen only relaxed when they left the clearing and Kellen and Rae were alone in the tree.

Rae wanted to climb down right away.

Kellen decided they should sit for another thirty minutes...and at minute twenty-six, she was rewarded with Horst, eyes fixed to the ground, wandering toward their tree.

He looked as if he had been picked up and shoveled into the bad-guy vehicle without respect or ceremony. He walked hunched over, protecting his midsection, and Kellen reflected with some pride she must have broken a few ribs. But he wasn’t feeling quite as sure about her escape as his compatriots; he’d already dealt with her once and been outsmarted. So as he moved, he kept his gaze to the ground, watching for footprints and...damn it. He was circling the tree, and in a minute he would look up.

Kellen had hung Rae’s pink bag on a short branch. Her own backpack was tucked between a branch and the trunk. She had opened the roller suitcase and pulled out the mummy’s head.

But it wasn’t a mummy’s head. Not even close. It was heavy, a marble stone with its features obscured by Bubble Wrap and tape. The base was square; in the far distant past when it had been made, it had been meant to sit in a position of honor on a fireplace or a family’s hearthstone. Kellen knew it deserved to be handled with respect and consideration for its great age.

But when Horst looked up, she flung it at him.

He ducked and shouted.

It hit his shoulder.

From twenty feet up, Kellen leaped out of the tree and smacked him with her feet. She landed in a sprawl on top of him and to the side.

He gave an abbreviated bleat and clutched at his belly. His body went limp.

She leaped aside, stumbled, turned to observe him. Was he faking it, preparing to lunge at her and drag her down?

No. He was lying on his back, his face up, his eyes rolled back. He didn’t twitch. She’d knocked him unconscious and if she was lucky, one of his broken ribs had pierced some vital organ. Not that she was feeling vindictive...

“Mommy! Are you all right?” Rae’s whisper pierced the quiet of the forest.

Kellen gave her the thumbs-up, hoped Rae knew what that meant, spent a few moments clutching her hip where the roof tile had pierced, then gathered herself and went over to Horst’s prone body. She kept her pistol pointed at his head as she rifled through his pockets and found a carefully folded paper, printed from a hand-drawn map, that showed the real route to the Restorer. “You two-faced son of a bitch,” she said quietly.

“What did the two-faced son of a bitch do?” Rae had slipped down the tree and sat on the branches six feet up.

Kellen debated whether she was supposed to give Rae the no-profanity speech, and decided she needed to give it to herself. “He lied about where we were going.” The map showed nothing but the actual path up the mountain to the Restorer when what Kellen actually needed was a ranger station.

“He’s a bad man,” Rae observed.

“Yes. He sold us out. That’s the worst kind of traitor. But now I know the right way to go.” Surely on the way, they’d see a sign for a ranger station. Maybe they’d even run into a ranger.

Maybe hope springs eternal.

Kellen lock-clicked the safety on her pistol, grabbed Horst under the arms and dragged him toward a tree, smaller than the rest, and sat him against the trunk. “Rae, toss me down my bag.”

Rae clambered back up the branches and got Kellen’s backpack. She tottered under the weight, then dropped it from twenty feet up.

Kellen leaped aside as it smashed to the ground. “Right. Thank you.” The breakfast cookies had just disintegrated into cookie dust. She pulled a couple of long nylon zip ties off the side of the bag, and with a few quick yanks, she secured Horst’s wrists behind the tree trunk. He wasn’t getting away anytime soon.

But when he had looked up into the tree, he had paused for a mere second in absolute astonishment. He had seen Rae. He knew she had a child with her. When his team found him, he was going to blab.

Yet Kellen couldn’t kill him, not in cold blood and certainly not in front of Rae. She would simply have to hope no one stumbled onto him for a couple of days. Once she reached the Restorer whose name, if this map was to be believed, was Zone—sure, Zone—she would send someone to free Horst from the tree and arrest him for attempted theft and murder.

She stepped away, watched Horst’s head loll on his chest and went back into his pockets. She still didn’t find her phone, and somewhere along the line he’d lost his pistol, but he had a short push-button-operated stiletto strapped to his belt and she secured that. She supposed a normal mother wouldn’t consider the possibility of training Rae to use it, but if she could teach Rae enough knife work to survive...well. Childhood innocence was all well and good, and Kellen would do everything in her power to preserve it, but mostly, she wanted to give Rae a chance to live.

Rae had to live.

Kellen gathered the dirty Bubble-Wrapped mummy’s head. She secured it to her bag with more long zip ties, then looked up at her bespangled daughter. “Toss Mommy down your bag. We’ve got to get moving.”

The pink bag thumped to the ground, and Rae jumped into Kellen’s arms. Kellen put her on her feet, and they set off into the woods.

Two hours later, Horst heard the sound of a vehicle on the road. It slowed to a stop, probably to examine the burned-out van. As soon as the door opened, he shouted for help. He kept shouting until he heard footsteps crunch across the pine needles toward him, and he started talking as soon as the man came into sight.